Economic Leadership for Cities

Lord Snape Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, first, I congratulate the three maiden speakers from the Liberal Benches on their contributions. I look forward to hearing from all three of them in future. I particularly single out—I hope without upsetting the other two—the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Goddard of Stockport. As some noble Lords know, Stockport is my home town. It is traditional never to criticise a maiden speech and I hope the noble Lord will not think that I am breaking that tradition when I say, as a former chairman of Stockport County Football Club, that his espousal of the cause of Manchester City will not be universally satisfactory in the town itself.

In the short time open to me, I wish to make just two points. My first is to express concern, not about the motives behind the debate today—I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, on the fluent way in which he moved it—but I have never believed that devolving power without resources is a sensible way to run things. We have been here before. It was a Conservative Government who created the metropolitan county councils, as my noble friend Lord Graham reminded us. Of course, that was partly out of a political motive as the Conservative Party could not win the big cities at that time and thought that by extending the electorate and taking in the suburbs it might be able to do so. When that proved to be fruitless, it promptly abolished the metropolitan county councils using the excuse of the abolition of the GLC. The previous Labour Government decided that some of the powers we are discussing today could perhaps be administered by the regional development authorities. The incoming coalition Government abolished the RDAs and replaced them partly with the LEPs—in my view a totally undemocratic group; women make up far less than 50% of the membership and as far as I am aware there are no women at all in the West Midlands LEP. There is nothing particularly democratic about that.

My second point is about resources. As I have indicated, if there is no money to do these things, there is no point creating a structure to do them. I was struck by the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord True. Like him, I am rather against Whitehall and Westminster dabbling in local government. I was a councillor during the passage of the Local Government Act 1972 referred to by my noble friend Lady Hollis. If the electors had felt differently, I might have been a member of Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council before the noble Lord, Lord Goddard, but democracy prevailed and my candidacy was rejected. But I do not feel that the structures set up by the 1972 Act were necessarily more efficient, democratic or fiscally responsible than the authorities that they replaced. I remain to be convinced that the devolution of powers that is behind this debate will work without adequate financing.

It is traditional in your Lordships’ House not to get too involved in politics, although what we in the other place called the Front Bench below the Gangway on the Government’s side is pretty adept at it when it comes to attacking my own party. This Government have waged a fiscal war against local government, and they show no signs of relenting. In the West Midlands, I am not alone in expressing my concern that the Chancellor of the Exchequer says that in future greater Birmingham—a greater Birmingham authority or a greater Birmingham structure—will have an elected mayor. I remind your Lordships that it is less than three years since the citizens of Birmingham, including me, voted not to have an elected mayor. Flouting democracy in that way is something that we ought to regret in this House. I see the Whip and I will sit down in a moment. I voted on the wrong side: I voted for an elected mayor. The fact is that, according to the LGA, by the end of this Parliament the real-terms reduction in government funding to the city of Birmingham will be 41.5%. In the borough of Sandwell, where my former constituency lies, it is 39%. These freedoms—the freedoms spoken about in this debate—are valueless without adequate and proper funding, and that is not what we will get under a Conservative/Liberal Democrat Administration.